Great comment and glad to hear you think freeze dried and MRE food is best.

Your concern about “balancing paying for so much food for the future while having enough money to buy food for today” is real a challenge most of us face.

I think first priority should be taking care of the needs of today so I would not recommend eating less than you or your family requires now.

If there is money that can be spent for food for disaster preparedness you can buy a little each time. The value of freeze dried food is that you can use some of it at any time in the future, if one experiences a temporary personal hardship and know you still paid a reasonable $3 - $4 per meal.

As Macy said “i didn’t try to eat the whole elephant in one bite”. You can purchase Mountain House 6 Can Food Modules
one at a time and build up a food reserve over a period time rather than all at once. It will take longer to be fully prepared and you will pay a little more per meal than if you bought all at once, but it is an option.

Kevin

especially right now when food prices are rising seemingly every week, and a short term trucker strike could empty the pantry shelves, it would really suck to buy a lot of long term, long shelf life food for storage and then need to eat it 4 months later.

one week i would buy a case of #10 cans of freeze dried; the next week i would buy a big bag of rice or beans, the week after i would buy extra canned food. i didn’t try to eat the whole elephant in one bite. pretty soon i had about 3 months supply for me and my fiance and our neighbors.

on top of that i added a few MREs, and some pouches of mountain house - both of those we rotate when we go camping.

Also really important if you are going to rely on dehydrated or freeze dried foods is to consider your water source, and consider having stored water or a backup source, and a good water filter to filter rain water.

-m